He used to read with me, on spring nights, in the school's dingy library. We read "David Copperfield" together; and would glance up from the page to watch, from the windows, the pale but glowing battle of sunset colors over the hills and mirrored in the darkling stretch of the Hudson. And sometimes, when the story would not give us respite, he would smuggle the book up into the dormitory--and when all was dark there, and the proctor slept, we would creep into the hall and read by its dusky light until long into the night. I have read "David Copperfield" again since then--but not with so exquisite a thrill. And reading of Steerforth, I used to look up at Sydney and imagine that he was that fine, attractive fellow--and that I, dumb but ecstatic in my pride of friendship, was little David. It seemed so wonderful to me, especially, that he was a Christian and I a Jew, and yet there had never been any question of difference between us. Other boys who had given me something of their friendship had made such a brave point of telling me that they didn't mind my being a Jew--that there were just as many good Jews as there were bad ones--and all those other stupid and inevitable remarks that we must swallow and forget. But with Sydney it was not like that. He had never mentioned it, and it seemed as if he knew that I dreaded the subject--and so kept silent on it out of kindness. Sometimes, when the days were warm and the trees were budding, we went off together on long walks through the country. Sydney taught me to smoke cigarettes, and we would stop on our way at a little village store that lay at the end of a hilly road. An old man, who was an invalid, owned the store. But he sat all day at his little card table in the dark, untidy rear, playing solitaire; and it was his young daughter who would wait on us behind the counter. She was a thin, dull-looking girl, scarcely pretty, yet with large, sombre eyes that her lonely task explained. She was ignorant, I am sure, and knew little of what went on in the town at the river's edge or in the big city, fifty-odd miles away. But there was something pathetic about her position--and when Sydney made it more and more a custom to talk to her, to make friendly advances, I thought it only the big generosity of his heart pouring out to succor another such shy soul as mine.